Zubenelgenubi

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And yet there is nothing I've been able to find to indicate which character levels are given which safeguards.

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Here you go:

5-10 Atlas Park
10-15 King's Row
15-20 Steel Canyon
20-25 Skyway City
25-30 Independence Port
30-35 Talos Island
35-40 Brickstown
40-45 Founders' Falls
45-50 Peregrine Island

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THANK YOU Mirai! I appreciate that so much that I can almost forgive you for using a picture of my future wife as your avitar!

I'm having trouble getting all of the lower level safeguard missions (and their badges) for my lvl 50. We are unable to exemplar down to get either Police Scanner or Safeguard missions of our own in lower level zones. Granted we can team with lower level players to accomplish this, but it can take a long time to find someone. It just seems like a punishment toward those of us who've been here a long time.

Also, it appears that the Safeguard Zone you get depends on the level of the character in your team who gets the mission, and not on which zone you are in when you get it.

When teamed with a lvl 18 in Steel Canyon, we got the Skyway Safeguard. When teamed with a lvl 13 in Skyway, we got the Kings Row Safeguard.

And yet there is nothing I've been able to find to indicate which character levels are given which safeguards. This makes it a lot more time-consuming, and therefore frustrating. Note that I don't mind time-consumption per se. This is a game after all. What I do mind is standing around twiddling my thumbs while looking for a partner, then running through 3 scanner missions, then finding out the safeguard mission he can get is one I already have.

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Because believe me, States, and I say this with no offense intended... you ain't no Stephen Hawking.

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Huh. He's not? That's funny, because every time I have my computer's voice synthizer read Statesman's posts, he sounds just like Stephen Hawking!

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Bases are 100% a DESIGN problem. Not a player problem.

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Designed and costed on the assumption players would want bases for PvP while it turned out players wanted them for PvE.

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Some players do want them for PvP. But now bases are over a year old and the PvP part is still not properly functioning. In fact, raiding for IoP's looks like it will never happen.

Maybe most players are just tired of waiting?

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There is no Statesman, there is only Zuul.

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Are you the keymaster?

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If he is the Keymaster to Statesman's Gatekeeper, then I do not want to know about it!!

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Did you know...

There used to be some nearly impossible to find mission doors due to a navigation bug? One such door was underneath a basketball court in the SW corner of Brickstown (/loc of 367.2 -30.6 2280.1, if you'd like to check it out). The bug was that for some reason, perhaps because it was located below some minimum terrain threshhold, it produced no beacon to follow in your navigation window, and by guesstimating using your map, it lead you to an empty basketball court. Only by noticing the narrow, fenced-in ramp adjacent to the court could you find the mission. Occasionally, you could find several toons just meandering about this basketball court unable to find their mission . I'm pretty sure this was fixed (or that door is no longer used, perhaps), although I can't recall the specifics of how or when.

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....

I got that mission a few weeks back and bugged/petitioned it again.

Unfortunately I had to use the mission dropping feature.

But yeah, not fixed (or not fixed in its entirety).

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One of the devs (I believe it was Positron himself) admitted once that while playing an alt in Brickstown he too was unable to find this mission door. And he too petitioned one of the GM's to help him find it.

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I think there's some misinterpretation here - or my speech wasn't clear.

Let's take a look at costume creation. It's been embraced beyond belief by players...we have in game costume contests and events organized by you the players...Some say it's the best part of the game. The single most requested item in CoH is to make the costume creator standalone...

Intestingly, costumes have no gameplay value. They don't boost damage. They don't boost resistance. They don't boost defense. They're only for show.

Now, let's take a look at bases. Take away the teleporters, take away anything game related.

As just a resource for expressing something unique, base creation is on par tech wise with costume creation. Admittedly, there's not quite the same amount of textures, colors, etc., but there's still a lot of versatility. And the layout possibilities are endless.

But what's clear from this thread - and from many, many posts - is that bases are "too expensive". To me, that's interesting (as it is to the Serious Games crowd). Costume changes come with a minimal cost that no one really complains about, but we complain about the costs of bases. Evidently, the costs exceed the perceived value of creating one's own HQ (btw, I confess that many other games have the notion of personal property, but aside from Second Life, I don't think they offer as much customizability as our bases).

Let's turn to the idea of an architect. We foresaw that some people would feel alienated if they weren't the architect. That's why some things (Personal Items) can be "crafted" by individuals and placed in the base. But even if there's an architect: many super groups have a member who designed a single costume which all then use. In other words, they're more than willing to accept someone else's opinion in the group identity for their avatar appearance. Again, the primary difference is cost (I think).

That's what the point of the talk was. I completely agree with many of the suggestions raised in the Base Construction forum, as well as one's mentioned here, would improve Bases to some degree or another. Posi and I go through them at length; really, it's just a question of time & resources. Some things would take astronomically long to do - or perhaps there's something else even more requested or popular.

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Not to sound disrespectful, Jack, but this post still ignores what I believe are the three most common complaints about bases:

(1) Rent.
(2) Bugs (especially the infamous and never-mentioned-by-the-devs random base booting bug).
(3) Bases are not yet complete (There are no scheduled raids, no IoP trial, and nobody expects them in the foreseeable future).

And your idea that “personal items” somehow fills the gap between the base architects and rank-and-file members really, really points out why so many of us say that bases (which are a good concept) were poorly developed. “Personal items” are not the least bit personal. I am unaware of anyone who thinks of them that way.

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Other really excellent ideas have been offered that would have been easy to create, but have also been ignored.

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I would not presume that any of our ideas are "easy". One thing I've learned from being a coder, most of the time you can't really tell how difficult something is until you know the legacy code.

I would not assume the devs are ignoring us. This is all a complex cost/benefit analysis. Remember, most of the game is not bases, so significant effort put into bases is benefiting a minority of the game. For example, if the choice comes down to adding some features to bases or making missions more dynamic, I'd choose the mission upgrades without question.

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OK, so we already have a wide variety of wall decorations, including umpteen variants on SG banners. We have pieces of artwork and charts of differing sizes. But creating a rectangular 2-dimensional object with a black background, a few "stars" and an image of the Earth on it as a wall decoration would be very difficult because .....?

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But - what if there were elavators within the bases, that would take us to an upper/lower floor of the base wherein the heroes individual rooms would be? A dorm sort of.

That way, once the SG purchases the Dormitory addon - members can customize (via influence) their own personal rooms within that upper area. Rooms would be accessible via permissions set by the occupant - so for instance if you have 10 people in an SG, and they all get along, but one is kind of quiet (or for RP reasons just doesn't want you in their room) they can close the room off to all but C - because C understands them.

Even with access to someone's room, you couldn't mess it up though.

>_< Sorry, I know it sounds silly but I think it would be fun and give the bases social angle more... well... purpose.

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This isn't in the least bit silly. Individualized apartments within the main base are one of the cool ideas that get suggested from time to time. Your personal take on it would work really well, I think. I’d love to see this.

But the devs have seen fit to not do this.

Other really excellent ideas have been offered that would have been easy to create, but have also been ignored. For example, “windows” to the outside world. They could come in a variety of sizes, and with different sets of pictures. One SG base might be way up in a building in Steel Canyon. Another might look out on the evil misty fogs of Dark Astoria. Or the surface of the Moon, or in near Earth orbit. Or a funky extradimensional space like the Shard. Such “windows” would be nothing more than wall decorations, and therefore relatively easy to make.

I wish the devs would do both.



That, and fix the bugs.

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"We spent more time developing [bases] than any other feature in City of Heroes or City of Villains," [Emmert]says. Although bases are built by a team, Emmert and his team viewed them as being incredibly, incredibly individual because each piece of the base is designed and added by individuals.

What happened was players hated it. "Its the most underused facet of the game. It received almost no coverage in the press. And theres nothing like it in any other MMP." Emmerts hypothesis is that people dont like contributing money to a group to express individuality.

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Once again Jack (I know more about how you should be allowed to have fun than you do) Emmit shows his utter cluelessness. Those of us on these boards have talked about what’s wrong with bases ever since they were part of CoV Beta, and yet Poppa Jack just doesn’t listen to what we’re saying.

When bases were introduced most of us loved them. The features were anticipated with great excitement. We saw huge potential for more fun. But it was the implementation of the bases that turned most people off.

That, and the bugs.

Some very, very basic errors in concept were made. For example, why do we have to pay for a “plot”? And, given that we must pay for a plot, why are they so freaking EXPENSIVE?? There would be a lot more individuality and creativity in base design if we had the freedom to spread the rooms out in interesting ways. But the draconian plot costs mean that each and every 1x1 square is very precious whether or not it has a room parked on it. Everything must be squeezed in as tightly as possible to avoid wasting limited prestige. And so we get tiny little grids of rooms. A far, far better method would have been to create one very large, free plot for all bases. Then you just pay for the rooms you place. If they wanted to charge a greater amount for bases having a second power generating room, then just write the code so that the second power room costs 4x more (or whatever) than the first power room did. The way base plots are designed just utterly baffles me! I simply cannot conceive how or why anyone would have chosen to create the current set-up!

Of course, there are also the bugs.

As far as designing by individuals is concerned, my SG tried that. For a few months, at first, we allowed anyone in the SG to edit the base. It actually worked out quite well. Most members didn’t really contribute, but the few who did got a really cool creative vibe going on. Everything was in flux all the time. Competing design philosophies were tried out and discarded. If someone deleted something I built that I really liked, I would just put it back. If I deleted something that someone else made and they put it back, it told me that it was one of their favorite concepts and I should try to accommodate it. So I might move it around, put it in another room, or whatever. Those of us who were involved in this process really formed a bond of friendship that had not existed before. But then a SG member invited an old friend into the SG. And for some bizarre reason that “friend” deleted the entire base. And then quit the SG. And then sold his account on eBay. So now I am the Official Base Architect and our creative dynamic is lost.

And don’t get me started on the bugs.

Base rent is a much hated part of the system. I can even sort of see the reasoning behind it. However, I just don’t think the reason for rent is worth the unintended consequence of turning so many players off to the whole concept of SG bases. The idea of earning prestige so. very. slowly. (WOOT! I just killed an AV! Now I can buy those two trash cans and a rack of test tubes!) and then watching it get taken away is just terribly de-motivating for so many players. You have to keep running just to stand still. And the more you earn, the faster you have to run just to stand still. Emmit’s “hypothesis” that we don’t like contributing “money” to the group is completely wrong. What we don’t like is contributing the “money” only to watch it get snatched away from the group for no good reason! To me this is such a complete no-brainer. Eliminating base rent would be greeted with nearly UNIVERSAL joy from the players. So why not just do it? It certainly wouldn’t be game-breaking (like returning regen scrappers to i4 functionality). So why not just do it? Why not? Why, why, why not??

Then we have the issue of bugs.

Actually, I’m still waiting for bases to be FINISHED Raids and IoP Trials were promised right from the start. So the Cathedral of Pain trial suddenly went live for a couple of days two weeks ago, and then it vanished. Exactly 8 members of my SG did the trial but the rest of us didn’t have the chance to organize another go at it before it was gone again. We tried a few instanced raids against a coalition base and they tried a few with us. But we just. could. not. get. them. to. work!!! And so we’ve all pretty much decided that we aren’t going to try anymore until base raid functionality is finished. It shouldn’t be long now. Bases have been out for a year at this point!

Which of course leads into a discussion of the bugs.

Maybe if the devs fixed the [censored] BUGS we would be more inclined to use the bases?


Naaah…. it must simply be that we hate to cooperate with one another for the common good of the SG. THAT must be it.

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I keep my turn rate capped at 1000% on all my characters. I've never understood why anyone plays with it lower.

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How does this help you?

When I first started playing this game, I didn't have a video card in my computer. (Had to save up for it.)

I absolutely could not see what my character looked like in the creation screen, so I went with Face 1, bald head, dark glasses, and a black T-shirt with a scorpion pattern that I didn't know if it sucked or not. (Ironically, this minimalist look got me a couple of compliments when I couldn't even see it myself.) In-game, all human figures were very insubstantial ghostly whisps who I could really only see because of the targeting reticle. Buildings were more substantial, but all the walls were transparent, like they were made of glass. (Although for some reason the HVAC systems were fully rendered. For me, it was City of Floating Ducts.)

Talk about a sense of wonder...

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Back in mah days, we didn't have Ageia-watsit cool graphics...

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BAH!

Back in MY day, we shoveled quarters into a Pong machine at the bowling alley... and we were THANKFUL!



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But tell that to kids today and they wont believe you.

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Heh.

Just last week some 17-year-old pup tried to tell me that that there was something wrong with me for being an old married guy playing a computer game. He was completely unable to fathom the idea that this game's demographics put me pretty close to the center of the bell curve while his scrawny high school butt sits about two standard deviations over toward the left hand side.

(It was as if his school doesn't even teach statistics! Can you imagine!??)

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Back in mah days, we didn't have Ageia-watsit cool graphics...

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BAH!

Back in MY day, we shoveled quarters into a Pong machine at the bowling alley... and we were THANKFUL!

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What you do is this. When building your base you set up a vault room. You place the IoP base. Its a brown circle with small squares around it. It is listed under IoPs in the base editer and costs no prestige to place. After you complete the trial you get an IoP. It is automaticly placed on top of this base you placed when building the room.

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Very helpful info. Thank you.

I've always liked you, Cuppa.

I will be sad when you're gone.

'nuff said.

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To this day, I believe that Ghost Widow has beent he most involved signature character in the CoX community because of her appearances. When was the last time Positron ever danced with you, huh?

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Recently on Champion (June 2006) a "Champion's Ball" was held. It was a formal affair, with attendees strongly encouraged to create appropriate attire at Icon. Ghost Widow also showed up for this event, and passed out temporary titles there as well.

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Not too long ago on the Test Server, Dark Astoria was not dark and cycled day and night just like the other zones.

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This was not just on test. DA was fog-free on live for a day or two. I popped in to check it out. Meh. Without the fog, those mobs of milling BP zombies just look stupid.

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Did you know...... (forgive me if this is a repeat)

Before Statesman got his powers he was a notorious Thief AND also the Cop trying to catch him.
Before Lord Recluse got his powers he was Statesman's partner in crime.
Statesman's wife was Lord Recluse's sister--"Maiden Justice".
Lord Recluse killed Statesman's brother.
Statesman had connections with the Family before he started stealing rarities.
Statesman "cleared his name" through bribery before coming to Paragon.

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These items are all out of the book, "Web of Arachnos." While they may be considered part of the "cannon" of the game, they have nothing to do with changes to CoH, which is what this thread is about. (How the game used to play, what mobs used to do, old bugs, etc.)

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I do not weigh the same as a duck.

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Neither do I. At least, not anymore.

(DAMN middle age!)

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does this mean we have to bury her in traditional kitty manner? you know.. with the hind legs and kicking?

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Traditional kitty burial is at sea.

...or at least at river.

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I doubt those tankers and blasters still felt that way after I6. Mashing monkeys ain't so easy when you can't herd and/or nuke hundreds of them at once. 10,000 monkeys then was only about as much work as 1000 is now.

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With this blaster anyway, you would be wrong.

I play blasters almost exclusively and I got the zookeeper badge for Zube without herding back when it was 10k. Just last week my ice/ice blaster teamed with a controller and got 1k monkeys (and the badge) in Crey's Folly in about 1.5 hours. Multiplying that time by 10 does not seem excessive to me, as not every badge should be obtainable in one play session (IMHO).

If anything, a 10k requirement for Zookeeper helps slow the production of PL'ed PvP toons.

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Now I had this dream with a groundhog, waterskies and a coconut.

What does it mean??

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It means that I'm calling the FBI.

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HAH!! I knew you couldn't read minds.

It should have been the SPCA that you called!!!

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Actually, the FBI has started a new Task Force to deal with your kind of prevert...

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Now I had this dream with a groundhog, waterskies and a coconut.

What does it mean??

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It means that I'm calling the FBI.

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Yes, we are all well aware of your position on this.

You lost.

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Lost?? I disagreed with the decision to put Isolator back in the game. But I didn't consider it a win/lose decision. The devs decided differently. No big deal.

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Your posting history says otherwise.